It's Thursday! It's mid-afternoon in London! It's another wrongheaded morning in Mericky! Everyone in Australia is dead from spiders and snakes and poisonous accents, apparently. And it's time for more Crossed hideosity!

Remember: Not safe for work, not safe for minors, not safe for people of a nervous disposition, not safe for the minor but still annoying typo on the first page, which I'm told will be fixed 'ere long.

Yeah as you can see in that last frame, the Gameskeeper is actually crying. You can see that lonely solitary tear running down his face as he says she thinks of Shaky as God. That threw me for a loop for sure. All this time, I thought she was savoring this time to make Shaky suffer more than anyone else in some effed up crossed way. But it almost seems now that she wants him to become crossed so that she can be with him in some sort of demented relationship. Or maybe to worship him in some way.Thoughts?

I'm a little confused on timelines. I felt like weeks or even months had passed in between Shaky shooting the groundskeeper/tying him to the tree and him leaving poor, brain damaged Ashoke to fend for himself, but it now seems that only a few days passed, seeing as Ashoke was able to return to the groundskeeper and free him before he died of dehydration.

@HardCory - "she wants him to become crossed so that she can be with him in some sort of demented relationship. Or maybe to worship him in some way." In at least one Catholic tradition (like the one my "old country" relatives adhered to), some of the devout are fixated on the suffering Jesus, rather than, say, the loving or triumphant Jesus. Aoileann is, or was, a devout Catholic. Shaky could be in very, very serious trouble.

Something to play with: why would Aoileann think Shaky was a god? I suspect that something startling happened when she and the priest were turned. It's been brought up before, but might the "lucky, lucky bastard" be immune?

Well, I believe Si did say in an interview that his starting to come up with Wish You Were Here was in a coffee shop not unlike the one where things kick off for Shaky and I believe he said something along the lines that Shaky is representative of him in some ways.

So if you want to follow that line of thought, as the writer is effectively the creator of the universe the story is in and everything in it ...

I got a question about the suit. How did they safely get the Gamekeeper in it without him getting infected? Sure, they could have used soap and disinfectants, but since it would only take a little bit of Crossed filth to infect him, it seems like a bit of a reckless move for Aoileann's normally cunning nature.

A few questions for you all out there, anyone know where there's a good plot summary of the plot of the Badlands and other issues? Is the TV Tropes page accurate? Up to now, it's what I've been going off for plot information.

When is Issue 49 coming out? Strangely, I've found a confirmed date for Issue 50 and beyond but not this one.

Admittedly it's surprising to see a chapter of Crossed with so much dialogue, but they're my favorite to read. Especially with a storyteller like Si - I went through this chapter as quickly as any other and had to go back to read again, knowing I'd read through too fast. The 2nd read was for pacing and absorption. This was a GREAT chapter! I'm dying to find out her endgame in this with Shaky...absolutely cannot wait.

(Even though that'll mean the end of WYWH I still want to know, now more than ever!)

I found the line about "She thinks you're god" rather baffling too. The only thing I can come up with is, remember a while back, in one of the flashbacks after Shaky and the Nun abandoned the Gamekeeper, they had that episode with the chapel? Where Shaky is moving in for a kiss and Aoileann has, what, a seizure and sees a holy glow or something around that stained glass window? and then Shaky had to really work hard to convince her to leave the place because she was suddenly convinced that staying there was her destiny or some shit. If it is the case that her unique, Crossed-state is due to having a seizure while being infected, she may have experienced that god-light around Shaky and, kind of like the dude from "Conquers All" had his fixation on his former lover become all-consuming after turning, had it become a fixation for her as well.

Long time lurker here, but I finally couldn't resist registering any longer.

"some of the devout are fixated on the suffering Jesus, rather than, say, the loving or triumphant Jesus. Aoileann is, or was, a devout Catholic. Shaky could be in very, very serious trouble."

That was my first thought too. Catholics not only love to portray what's essentially their God as a man nailed to a cross, they also ritually eat his flesh and drink his blood. So becoming the Crossed Jesus, might turn out quite horrible for Shaky indeed. If he's lucky they turn him first, but since the crossed can't really suffer, and you can't have Jesus having the time of his life on a cross...

I have no idea about what could Shaky being "God" mean, but if he were a "suffering god", I suppose Teresa wouldn't have given him an easy way out of the torture-redeeming death by becoming a crossed by licking the envelope. As it was mentioned in this chapter, the crossed don't suffer, so that would have had no point. I suppose we still have one more gamekeeper's tale chapter to go that might shed some light on the issue.

For now, I'm going with Shaky being God having something to do with this part of the bible, Matthew 22, 37-40: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”. Teresa is, in a very twisted way, caring for her neighbors (her crossed pack, making sure that they avoid the "boring", which might be what she perceives as hell), but she loves Shaky even more (her line in Celine's flashback, "all for shaky", while she was CRYING, comes to mind). Now, she's a crossed, so what does this love really translate a? I suppose he might be crucified and put to watch all kind of shits done in front of him if it came to her.

Random stuff:

-Teresa also seems to follow Jesus' words on "loving" your enemies, as Moses has been consistently trying to fuck her plans and she still hasn't taken any actions against him, as far as we know.-The gamekeeper's voice goes lower when he talks shit about shaky, when he says a couple of "I was there, I saw it" parts, and when he talks about Teresa in a non-adoring way (like the part where he says that she must have problems tying loose ends). The "he's being watched as he talks" theory sounds more and more likely.-The gamekeeper is confirmed to be able to feel stuff even in his damn twisted ways, just like when the aristocrat lady killed herself. Watching him cry is still pretty damn weird.-I guess Maria was the leader of the sortie that found Shaky and the boy? I doubt Don and Rab would have put Jon in charge. anyways, it was good seing them again, it brings back memories.

well gk said teresa sees shanky as GOD not JESUS. but if i;m not wrong caption cook or some early explorers got killed by savages for similar reasons. at first they were met like gods coz of their fancy clothes, guns and equipment. but after seeing them bled they killed them coz gods don;t bleed. and a fake god get's a brutal death.

Holy shit. Best interlude to date, in my opinion. I've always suspected that Shaky was slowly turning into a crossed-sympathizer. This might seal it. OR this is his terrified-at-events-to-come rationalization of the inevitable. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em kind of thing. Maybe a little bit of column A, little bit of column B...

I loved the dream sequence and implication! Laughed aloud and sympathized with the stoned crossed in Shaky's dream (re: self-consciousness, NOT fucking my food). I've often thought that the crossed are basically behaving like most animals in the wild -- granted, with a little more self-awareness and spite -- but still... nature by definition is ruthless, brutal, and unforgiving. "There is no hope" in nature. Human society, culture, politesse, etiquette, etc. draw a veil over the fact that we are all, really, just psychotic apes. I'm willing to bet more than one person has made this reference in one of these threads before but oh well I'm saying it anyways... One of my favorite lines from a villain is the Joker's, "I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."

I often imagine how the Joker would interact with the crossed world. Or I'll imagine what a crossed Joker might be capable of. That'd be some great fanfiction, right there. Okay so updated list of fiction/non-fiction characters I want to see crossed is:

-Eva Longoria (thanks to @Shan)-Ted Nugent (to team up with or battle Eva)-The Joker (because duh)

Anyway, great stuff Si. When expecting another full chapter, I am normally horrified when I see the word "interlude" but today I was pleasantly surprised by the entertainment value of this two page interlude. Might just be me, though, in that it touched on a lot of things I've been tossing around in my head about the crossed. Got my mind rolling. A great insight into Shaky's mental and his theories on the crossed. Mysteries mysteries mysteries. Tsk tsk tsk.

@111111 Of course in Catholic lore, Jesus is part of the Trinity and not only human, but for all intends and purposes also God. It doesn't help here that nuns are supposed to be (depending on denomination more or less figurative) married to Jesus, and Shaky and Aoileann were a couple of sorts. Until we get thrown yet another curve-ball, I'm going to assume that Shaky is going to be crucified on the day his luck finally runs out.

Does anyone else think the last two chapters have been a diversion? Seems the Gamekeeper has been talking to Shaky a bit too long for me, and it seems a bit out of character. I wonder if the people on Cava are being murdered as we speak. It would seem likely that the nun would want to finish the rest of them off to leave Shaky alone. It would be far easier to rape him into being infected with the rest gone.Anyway just a thought. Anyone else feel the same way?

I've had the same suspicion. I'm also very curious to see the setting that the Gamekeeper is residing in while telling his tale. We've only seen a zoom-in of his ugly jaws for the duration of his narrative. I'm dying to see the zoom-out scenario. Is he being tortured? Teased? Threatened? Sneaking up on old Shakes? Ambush?!! Gah.

But yeah... you might be on to something about Cava. Although I still half-suspect my Pasture of Eden theory might be realized as well.